


Bright Black

by Irrelevancy



Series: Sweet Fire [3]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Akuma no Mi | Devil Fruit, Angst with a Happy Ending, Asphyxiation, Broken Bones, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Dysfunctional Family, Family Issues, Imprisonment, M/M, Marco forgives too easily, Needles, Post-Marineford, as always, only as a metaphor, only as a theme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:48:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22785121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Irrelevancy/pseuds/Irrelevancy
Summary: Katakuri doesn't know how to keep Marco (but he certainly tries).Katamar, violence & death but happy ending.
Relationships: Charlotte Katakuri/Fushichou Marco | Phoenix Marco
Series: Sweet Fire [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1638064
Comments: 3
Kudos: 41





	Bright Black

**Author's Note:**

> anon asked for "a dark katakuri x marco prompt where he's trying to break marco to make his" and i tried i really did ;;;; but my Katakuri is too depressed right now to manage that sjdfkndjs one day i'll relive the canon and lean more into vicious!Kata, but today is not that day...
> 
> Follows the relationship set-up of [Bite the Hand](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22268830) and runs on the same post-Marineford world dynamics as [wishes and fishes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22554679).
> 
> Content Warnings at end!

Years, years, _years_ before it all, Katakuri once had to get a shot. As in, a needle into vein. This was before he had his fruit powers but after Brulee-got-hurt. There had been a doctor on Mama’s islands whom he’d admired—a man, an about-to-be father, an about-to-be castoff.

He’d liked the doctor after some of Katakuri’s siblings stole syringes from the man’s office drawers. One little sister had fumbled the theft and stabbed herself through the palm, and before Katakuri could go help, the doctor had gotten down to her level and pulled out her hand. Katakuri thought he would hit her in punishment. The little sister did too, and visibly braced herself for impact.

 _Haven’t you been punished enough?_ the doctor had laughed wryly, before gently affixing a bandage to the wound. He had a smokey, dilapidated voice of a man on his last words, a throat about to crumble away. Those words in that voice affixed themselves, for some reason, in Katakuri’s memories.

To have been punished enough. What a thought.

Katakuri was sent to that doctor’s office to get a shot two days before the doctor would be killed. Katakuri hadn’t known about that timeline. (He knew now that that doctor did.) He had simply walked in, stood straight the middle of the room, and waited for his needle.

The doctor didn’t say anything, didn’t make him wait long. The approach of the sharp thing was from his right, and Katakuri knew better than to swallow nervously. Knew better to have any tells, knew better to do anything other than stand still and take it. He stared straight ahead. He didn’t move.

 _Want to watch?_ the doctor suddenly muttered, voice no more than the rustle of sand deposited by a lapping wave. _Sometimes it’s better to see it coming._

So Katakuri slowly turned his head, focused his gaze, and saw the needle coming.

That was the second thing he’d never forget that doctor saying. Two days later, Mama announced her pregnancy, and the doctor demanded in no uncertain terms to let him care for his child or kill him.

(The doctor had known about the timeline.)

Sometimes it was better to see it coming. Katakuri hadn’t seen the doctor’s death coming (at least, not with any helpful length of foresight), and it stung just a bit worse than the needle. Yet another thing unanticipated: that Katakuri would go on to build a whole damn career out of seeing things coming. How funny, that the doctor had so craved fatherhood that he died at Mama’s hands for it, but maybe, if he hadn’t asked for the impossible and instead just hunkered down and stood still and _took it_ , he would’ve had exactly what he wanted—

But it’s not like Katakuri wanted a father. It’s not like Katakuri even knew how to want something like that. The doctor, therefore, should hardly be blamed for not knowing how to want a son.

The same framework of logic ought to apply now. No one should be blamed for not knowing how to want Katakuri. But Katakuri, for all his physiological adhesion, just couldn’t seem to get it to stick.

“What’s,” Marco spat, breath hot and full of blood, “the fucking _point_ here?”

The point, Katakuri wanted to say for one undisciplined, hysterical second, was the needle. The point was seeing it coming so it wouldn’t hurt as bad. The point was already broken off and embedded under his skin, so he wouldn’t ever forget his _purpose_. He was the embedding, he was the cut to the bone before the skin could break; he was preemption.

… _Marco_ was prevention. Prevention of consequences, once, the man with whom Katakuri could unpin and unwind, the man to whom the simple equivalence of _action equals consequence_ need not apply. Katakuri’s touches did not transmute to harm, but pleasure. His insolence invoked affection, not punishment.

But now, Marco was preventing the fulfillment of Katakuri’s mission. Katakuri had cleared the lot of his siblings because that’s what he did, faced with foe like Marco. What else he did with foe like Marco: defeated them, soundly, resolutely. The time that’s passed was one solid thread, while the time that stood before Katakuri was a million floating ends; he gathered and raveled them, and once they’ve passed they couldn’t change, couldn’t get loose and get in Katakuri’s way anymore.

All Katakuri had to do was gather, and ravel, and _end_ this thing with Marco.

“What can we possibly achieve like this?” Marco tried again, after another failed encounter of strikes. It failed because Marco was still not wounded to the point of defeat, and Katakuri had still not yet been caught by time present and time passed. They failed because Mama expected him back hours ago.

The _point_ , at Marco’s words, ached under Katakuri’s skin. Achievement. On Marco’s second visit to the bedroom that was only nominally Katakuri’s, he’d been asked the same thing, when nervous aggression had taken hold of Katakuri.

_What can we possibly achieve?_

_Achieve?_ Marco had been nothing but amusedly thoughtful. _The pleasure of each other’s company, I suppose? If that’s such an achievement, yoi._

The most facetious and obnoxiously _wanting_ part of Katakuri wanted to ask Marco why that couldn’t apply now. It might have something to do with the islanders’ blood Katakuri’s siblings had on their hands. It might have something to do with the unconscious pregnant woman with the broken leg Marco was so desperately keeping behind the spread of his wings.

If Katakuri hit him with haki, he healed slower.

“What,” Marco gasped, in the guttural growl of a man who didn’t expect his question answered, not at this point anyways, not after five grueling hours with Katakuri’s complete, stony silence, the mother’s son refusing to exchange anything but talons and trident and blood. _Our weapons_ , Katakuri had thought proudly at one point, _match_. “What do you even want from me?”

“To keep you.”

It took a moment before Marco realized he’d answered. Took another moment for Marco’s eyes to widen. Katakuri struck then.

He aimed for the pregnant woman. This was more strategic than cruel, but Katakuri has also never been one to divest from both collateral damage and the blame of it. Marco scrambled to protect, and Katakuri rained down a barrage of haki fists to put Marco’s entire system under strain. The choreography here was, after five hours, predictable: Katakuri straining to grab fistfuls of the loose future time and getting far enough ahead to knot the noose. Marco dying, then getting back up from inconsequential death.

_What’s the fucking point here?_

_What can we possibly achieve like this?_

Inconsequence. What a concept. To have been punished enough. He just wanted—

Marco’s lips parted around a pant, and Katakuri took the opening.

He’s been inside Marco’s mouth before. He’s even been down Marco’s throat before, has taken pleasure from the pressure of undulating muscles around his malleability. He’s even expanded and choked before, eye-to-eye with Marco watching the other man’s eyes go dark, so dark they dimmed to unconsciousness. He’s released the gag and watched Marco’s gaze reignite like struck flint. Make black look bright.

But Katakuri wasn’t looking into Marco’s eyes now.

He did what he’s been wanting to do for far longer than five hours, longer than the war that started the moment Whitebeard died. He flooded his system with intent, felt the linking and spreading of polysaccharides like the linking and spreading of threads and time, and _enveloped_. Embedded Marco under his skin like a needle.

Snapped the point off and left it in.

Flesh had a way of pushing out intrusions, so Katakuri was fighting biology to keep Marco in. (Again, nothing new—he’s _been_ fighting biology to keep Marco, Mama expected him back, Mama expected expected expected—)

(If only time would just _stop_ —)

Flesh had a way of pushing out intrusions, so Katakuri was fighting _Marco_ to keep his biology in. Like chasing fire if fire was a bird, so that wasn’t a simile at all. Flames formed and died and form and died, as Katakuri broke a sweat to keep Marco smothered. To fill the esophagus that grasped at him like a fist on lifeline, to beat lungs like live fish into submission.

To constrain the jerking limbs until he was exhausted with the effort, muscles protein one moment and amylopectin the next. Until popping a wing joint granted him longer stretches of reprieve. Until cracking ulna also meant Marco’s throat opened on a scream to make the filling the gagging the asphyxiating quicker.

To compress the convulsing midsection until ribs and hips creaked, but not the spine because their third time together Marco had complained about the annoyance of a broken back even with his powers. Katakuri also didn’t touch the femur. Clusters of nerves though—the two points above the pelvis, on either side of the spine at the small of the back, in and under the scapulae like he was trying to pry the wings free with his bare biology—were game. Anything to keep Marco screaming, to keep him dying and living and dying and living, too distracted by the pain to think hard about escaping.

( _The pleasure of each other—_ )

(Why _shouldn’t_ it apply—)

If there’s anything Katakuri knew, it was discipline. It was the pen-straight stack of vertebra on vertebra, it was holding absolutely still for the incoming breakage of skin. He absolutely knew how to keep up the consistent murder of Marco for an hour, two. Three.

But every story had its complications, not every needle came out clean; Katakuri also knew of indulgence, the monstrous slobbering of it permitted only behind walls and walls and walls. So Katakuri erected those walls. Transformed himself into the thickest skin and forget the pinprick, Marco could be bone if he wanted. Could be the blue in Katakuri’s veins or a stomach sweet and full of fire.

It took four hours for Katakuri’s concentration to lapse. One missed elbow, freed and fleeing from wing to limb, trembling fingers clawing.

Tapping. Tapping.

Katakuri didn’t flinch from punishment but this wasn’t punishment. This was worse. This was a continuation of the two unanswered questions and the one answered one, this was _communication_ and communication took _time_ which meant time had to keep moving—

The lifeline’s gotten so far out of Katakuri’s reach. _What do you even want from me?_ To hold on and keep sinking, two anchors mooring each other. _What do you want from me?_ To do and not kill, not die, not ache with the flaying of stricture.

_What do you want?_

—your company.

But he shouldn’t ask for the impossible. Shouldn’t know how to want a father, a doctor, a—

Katakuri altered back to protein and grabbed back onto time. Without his attentive plaiting the threads have turned a mess. Impossible to unknot, now that they were here. Marco’s hand came with him. Katakuri expected an asphyxiation in return.

Instead, blue-gold fire billowed everywhere Katakuri’s body retreated, and that hand clenched into a fist. Slugged Katakuri across the face.

“You stupid—” Marco was _crying_ , distressing heartache so clearly slashed across his face. “— _stupid_ son of a _bitch_.”

Katakuri had to laugh. Oh well, it’s not like he could kill Marco for the insult.

“Why didn’t you just— You should’ve just _said_ —”

There were still walls up. Even if they weren’t Katakuri’s own, he could still chance the indulgence.

“Said?” he scorned, scratched and bleeding everywhere Marco had managed to get a black talon in. “And then what?”

Marco was hovering, wings keeping him aloft as they supplied the fluid wrap of blue around them, and he looked as if he wanted to punch Katakuri again. Katakuri would let him. Seeing it coming was better.

“And then,” Marco growled, teeth gritted, “we _work it out_. We’ve come to agreements before.”

“There’s no talking terms with Mama—”

“Yeah but I’m not talking to _Mama_ I’m talking to _you_.” With a decisive swing of his arms Marco reformed his arms, severing the flames around them from the feed of his fruit. The walls began to flicker; the timeline has started moving again, and Katakuri couldn’t afford to not look forward. But in a minute. Marco was still here, perched on his arm that had unwittingly came up to provide a foothold, so that he could _keep_ Marco eye-to-eye. A stare in bright black.

Marco’s hand though, when it touched Katakuri’s cheek, was flesh.

“Only you.” A smile came with furrows on Marco’s brow, and Katakuri could just recognize the fondness under all that exhaustion. He all of a sudden felt _painfully_ guilty. Wished Marco had bitten off and bled more of him in return. “Look yoi, Let me go now, but I’ll come _back_.”

Maybe the preemption hadn’t been necessary. Maybe Katakuri hadn’t needed to break the needle to keep it, that first time he knew that pain could be kind too.

There was a shock of cool air when Marco suddenly yanked down the cowl around his mouth. Katakuri barely held himself back from snapping, but Marco stuck his hands amidst his teeth anyways. Pressed a firm kiss—that motion which they called a kiss, Marco’s parted mouth and tongue laving against Katakuri’s upper lip—ahead. Pulled up the cowl before the flames became translucent enough to see through.

“I swear it, yoi.”

“To come back,” Katakuri echoed dumbly.

“Yes.” How simple an answer. No terms, no ultimatums. Just a tired smirk, a trailing thumb. “Don’t I always?”

**Author's Note:**

> CW: consistent needle imagery, asphyxiation by "food" object, continuous death
> 
> I was so struck by the image of Katakuri making a lil mochi shack for himself and Marco in hergan416's [Help Me Doctor (I Have Sinned)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22321390) that it kinda happened here too. Just,, tighter , walls....
> 
> My [writing tumblr](https://irrelevancy-y.tumblr.com/) where I often post fills that don't make it onto AO3 :'D come hang out!!!!! Leave a comment!!!


End file.
